STOP PRESS! New Dan Brown book on the way!
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I think I read Eon by Greg Bear. I think I gave up on it before finishing it. But from memory, my dislike of the book was not caused by the terrible, didn't-you-listen-in-high-school-English, why-not-spend-half-an-hour-reading-about-creative-writing, turgid, hacky prose style.

The corpse was dead. He had been killed. The detective knew who the corpse was because he was the cardinal. The detective had seen the cardinal before, so he knew what he looked like. The cardinal is dead, he thought. Someone has killed him. He decided to find out who had killed the cardinal. I should find out who had killed the cardinal, he thought. He looked around the room for clues. He saw a clue. A clue, he thought. This clue will help me find out who has killed the cardinal. The detective was good at clues because he was very clever and good at being a detective. Also before he was a detective he had been an archeologist or something, which gets mentioned every chapter.
Suddenly there was a cliffhanger! I need to get somewhere in a hurry because of the cliffhanger, thought the detective. I hope I get there in time because a bad thing will happen if I do not get there in time.

Chapter 77
The detective reached the place just in time. He ran into the place. The place had very old and interesting architecture. It was very old. And historical. It had arches. They were very archy.
The detective did the thing he needed to do to stop the cliffhanger. That was close, he thought. I wonder if there will be a cliffhanger at the end of this chapter too?

Leolian'sBro wrote:
Sir Leigh Teabing? Not only is that the worst pastiche of an American view of English society and names, but it's an anagram of the two people he swore blind he didn't rip off in the writing of his novel!

If that's true, then I have a whole new level of respect for him

I actually read Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Its characters were more well rounded and the plot made more sense.

President Weasel wrote:
Dan Brown is the only published author I have encountered who is painfully bad at writing.

You've never read a Matthew Reilly book, have you?

If Dan Brown and Michael Bay had a child, that retarded offspring would be called Matthew Reilly and would write really fucking terrible novels that somehow still get published despite being fucking awful on every level.

Leolian'sBro wrote:
My personal award for excellence goes to the casting director for the Da Vinci Code. The main character is described in the first dozen pages of the book as 'Harrison Ford in Harris tweed' (because Dan Brown needed to rip off Indiana Jones to lend some much needed academic authority to his trash novel). So, who do we cast when we come to make the film?

Just announced! The new Dan Brown! Pre-order The Lost Symbol at half price now.

So. Anyone going to own up that they'll be buying a copy?

After enjoying Da Vinci Code because I'd never heard of Dan Brown and everyone I knew was going on about DVC, I tried the one about mathematical codes and stuff, and literally binned the book about 50 pages or so in, if not less. Absolutely awful. Suddenly realised Mr Brown has one book in him, and DVC was clearly the best version of that book.

StarchildHypocrethes wrote:
Some people think far too much about the books they're reading.

What, we should just let it wash over us and not really take it in?

I take in the story, but I don't then sit down and think of how many better ways I could have constructed various sentences

Neither do I - I just notice when the ones I'm reading are really clunky and take me out of the story and into the thought process - "Why does he have to explain so much to me in the dialogue? It's not natural and a really amateur technique!"